This CMF buds 2a unit is provided to our author by Nothing India for reviewing. He is not being paid to post this review. What you are about to read are the author’s honest opinions after more than a month of usage. There has been no editorial input from Nothing.
DESIGN
From a design point of view, the Buds 2a (and the series in general) involve a squircle case, which sits fine on top of the palm of your hand. When put in pockets, it does tend to bulge a little bit. It is made of plastic, which is fine considering the price. The top of the case does seem to wiggle a little bit — it slides in place. From the durability part, an impromptu drop test did take place, which reassured me of the fact that this thing can survive a drop and still perform fine.
Personally, it took me some time to “learn” how to open the case using one hand. It does take a bit of figuring out. Now, talking about the little knob on the top left, it is used to attach a lanyard to the buds. I haven’t tried attaching one yet, but what I have done is fidgeting. It is very entertaining to rotate the knob with your thumb. I’d say it does double as a fidget toy, in that sense. It has no other apparent function than attaching a lanyard or fidgeting. I would’ve liked it if CMF provided a small lanyard with the buds, because not everyone has to have a lanyard with them.
That would make it less gimmicky and more usable right out of the box. I must say, though, the dial does give an identity to these buds and make them recognisable. It is made of glossy plastic, though, which does attract a lot of fingerprints.
The buds themselves are designed very well. The shape prevents them from falling off. Sometimes, though, I have felt like they are about to fall off. But if I push it in properly, it fits well. I have used the buds at the gym, and it is fine when you are lifting weights or walking on the treadmill. In case you are running, you just have to make sure they aren’t loosely put on.
A design quirk I must admire is that in the touch area of the left earbud, the design of a hollow circle has been carved, and in the case of the right earbud, a full circle has been carved. This is a nod to the pictorial representation of CMF, wherein the hollow circle stands for colour, and the full circle stands for finish. Clever design! Other than this, there is no actual L or R marking on the stems of the earbuds.
BATTERY
The buds feature a 43 mAh battery, and the case 460 mAh. The battery life of the Buds 2a has been exceptional for me. I have sat through hour-long meetings, and then used it afterwards for a couple of days without ever having to charge it frequently. In my use, the buds haven’t completely drained. So, for the average user, and even for demanding users, the battery of the Buds 2a is going to hold up just fine.
CMF claims the following battery stats:
- Battery Life (ANC Off): Up to 35.5 hours with case, 8 hours with earbuds only.
- Battery Life (ANC On): Up to 23 hours with case, 5 hours with earbuds only.
- Fast Charging: 10 minutes for 2 hours (buds only, ANC off), 1.4 hours (buds only, ANC on).
- Charging Time (Case + Earbuds): 89 minutes for a full charge.
- Charging Time (Earbuds Only): 57 minutes for a full charge.
COMPANION APP AND FEATURES
The companion app for Nothing and CMF’s wearables is Nothing X. It is a well-designed app with a clean aesthetic and functionality. For the Buds 2a, from the app, you can change the sound modes between ANC, Transparency, and ANC off. Besides that, you can customise the function of all the tap gestures. It offers tap and hold, double tap, triple tap, and triple tap and hold controls that offer setting changes like play/pause, skip forwards/backwards, voice assistant, and noise control change (between two settings, e.g., between ANC and transparency).
But it is to noting that it doesn’t offer a gesture involving a single tap. Single tap to play/pause would’ve partially made up for the lack of in-ear detection, but it can register a lot of accidental taps, so it’s a valid reason, I suppose. Instead, the closest thing to in-ear detection is double tap to play/pause.
Also, the connectivity is excellent. The moment you open the case, the Buds 2a will automatically connect to your device. And the first time you open the Buds, it will show a pop-up screen on your phone (similar to what Apple does with the AirPods), and from there, you can pair it to your phone with just a tap.
The app also gives you two widgets, of which one is for checking the battery stats and changing the sound mode, which looks really neat, and the other is the news reader widget. It’s an interesting widget, where Tim Holbrow, Nothing’s CFO, reads you news on various topics like Business, Sports, Technology, Science, Health, among others, updated daily. While the first widget doesn’t show anything while the buds are disconnected, the latter widget actually works without connecting to the buds. This means you can hear Tim’s news from your phone’s speaker.
A useful quirk of the Buds 2a is that it supports being paired to two devices at once. This means that you don’t have to keep on disconnecting and reconnecting to use it on multiple devices. I did face an odd experience during my testing period, multiple times. I had the Buds 2a connected to both my phone and my laptop. I was in a meeting on my laptop when I suddenly got a call on my phone.
At that moment, the earbuds started to relay the sound of the ringtone and stopped the sound of the meeting. But when I declined the call, surprisingly, I still couldn’t hear a thing. I had to end up disconnecting the buds manually from my laptop, and missed out on quite a bit of the discussion.
Also to be noted is that it doesn’t auto-play/pause media. If you play media on both of the devices that you are connected to, you will only hear the sound from the device that you first started playing. If you’re playing a video on the second device, that, however, will keep on going.
SOUND MODES
The Buds 2a offers three kinds of sound modes, typical of any earbuds at this price point:
- Active Noise Cancellation
It features noise cancellation up to 42db, and supports a frequency range of 2900Hz. Dropping the jargon, I will say that the ANC is quite good for the price point. In my use, it has done a good job blocking out fan noise and a fair job in blocking out speech. Traffic noise, especially honking, can still be heard. But when playing music, environmental sounds are suppressed fine. - Transparency mode
It basically makes the environment sound audible, while also giving you a good music experience. This is particularly useful when you must listen to something, perhaps announcements at the railway station or airport. The transparency mode works surprisingly well, better than other similar earbuds I’ve used. - Off
It basically turns off ANC, and does not use transparency mode, giving you the normal experience you’d have when you wear any normal pair of earphones. It works just as fine as ANC mode, minus the noise cancelling.
Also, this might be the appropriate section to say this, but one day, when I opened the app, I was surprised to see the “Spatial Audio” section, which isn’t supported on the Buds 2a — something that is found in the Buds 2 and above. While I thought this was an update, as I had recently updated the buds’ firmware, it seemed to be a bug.
EQUALISERS
The equaliser support is rather nice, with the available presets being:
- DIRAC
- POP
- ROCK
- ELECTRONIC
- ENHANCE VOCALS
- CLASSICAL
Since Nothing’s recent partnership with the British audio company Dirac, they have tuned the CMF Buds 2a, and are offering a “Dirac” preset. I must say, of all the presets available, the Dirac one is the best. It offers the best, punchy bass, clear mids and nice treble. I’ll say you’ll find yourself using it most of the time, because it is perfectly balanced. The POP equaliser is fine as well, and the ENHANCE VOCALS equaliser basically does what it is called.
Moreover, you can create your own custom preset. You can change the bass, treble and mids to your liking and create one that makes sense to you.
SOUND
Kind of a spoiler: out of the Buds 2a, 2 and 2 Plus, the 2a’s sound has to be my favourite. This came out very surprising to me, too, because the cheapest of the bunch sounds the most balanced. Incredible. I say that because the bass is punchy, and with the bass enhancer “Ultra Bass” provided, you can boost it up by 5 levels, and that makes it so much more punchier. I say boost it by 2-3 levels for the sweet spot. Also, I have not noticed any sub-bass roll-off. (Tested on: Limit to Your Love, James Blake)
The mids, in particular, the vocals, are very good. They are clear, and to me, they don’t sound buried. Vocals sound just fine. This is the same with even podcasts. You can wear this to listen to vocals just fine.
The treble quality is very good. The hi-hats and percussion are heard very well. It is clear, and contrasts fine with the mids, i.e., the mids are still audible. (Tested on: Billie Jean, Michael Jackson). I have mostly done this by testing using the Dirac preset, and I must say, they did an excellent job tuning these earbuds. It’s easily the preset that you will find yourself using all the time.
Overall, I’m genuinely surprised by how good this sounds for the price. I’m no audio expert, and this is one of the few audio products I’ve reviewed, but I must say, the Buds 2a sounds good.
FINAL VERDICT
Surprisingly, the Buds 2a is easy to recommend to a lot of users. It features a good design, great equaliser support, satisfactory ANC, and very good sound quality, all for the price of ₹2199.
The only caveat I see here is the lack of in-ear detection. If the Buds 2a had that, it would be instantly recommendable. If not having in-ear detection is fine by you, then go ahead—the Buds 2a could be your new daily driver.
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